


5"/ 



THE 



* 



USES OF ASTRONOMY. 



OCCASION OF THE INAUGURATION OF THE DUDLEY OD.-K1! YATOKY. 



E D W A R D E V E R E T T 



BOSTON: 

LITTLE, BROWN "AND COMPANY. 

1 8 5 G. 



THE 



USES OF ASTRONOMY. 



A DISCOURSE DELIVERED AT ALBANY ON THE 28TH OP AUGUST, 1856, ON 
OCCASION OP THE INAUGURATION OF THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY. 



BY 

EDWARD E^ 






BOSTON: 

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, 

1856, 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBEI DGE : 
ALLEN AND FARNHAM, PRINTERS. 



A' 



MRS. BLAND IN A DUDLEY, 



TO THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, 



TO THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, 



THE CITIZENS OF ALBANY, GENERALLY, 

THIS DISCOURSE 

DELIVERED ON THEIR INVITATION AND IN THEIR PRESENCE, 

AND PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE 

INAUGURATION OF THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY, IS, WITH THE BEST WISHES 

FOR THE COMPLETE SUCCESS OF THAT NOBLE ENTERPRISE, 

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

Boston, September, 1856. 



ORATION. 



Fellow-citizens of Albany, — 

Assembled as we are under your auspices in this ancient 
and hospitable city, for an object indicative of a highly 
advanced stage of scientific culture, it is natural in the first 
place to cast an historical glance at the past. It seems almost 
to surpass belief, though an unquestioned fact, that more than 
a century should have passed away, after Cabot had dis- 
covered the coast of North America for England, before any 
knowledge was gained of the noble river on which your city 
stands, and which was destined by Providence to determine in 
after-times the position of the commercial metropolis of the 
continent. It is true that Verazzano, a bold and sagacious 
Florentine navigator in the service of France, had entered the 
Narrows in 1524, which he describes as a very large river, 
deep at its mouth, which forced its way through steep hills to 
the sea. But though he, like most of the naval adventurers 
of that age, was sailing westward in search of a shorter pas- 
sage to India, he left this part of the coast without any 
attempt to ascend the river ; nor can it be gathered from his 
narrative that he believed it to penetrate far into the interior. 

Near a hundred years elapsed, before that great thought 
acquired form and substance. In the Spring of 1609, the 



heroic but unfortunate Hudson, one of the brightest names in 
the history of English maritime achievement, but then in the 
employment of the Dutch East India Company, in a vessel of 
eighty tons, bearing the very astronomical name of the 
" Half-moon," having been stopped by the ice in the polar sea 
in the attempt to reach the East by the way of Nova Zembla, 
struck over to the coast of America in a high northern lati- 
tude. He then stretched down south-westwardly to the entrance 
of Chesapeake Bay, (of which he had gained a knowledge 
from the charts and descriptions of his friend, Capt. Smith,) 
— thence returning to the North, entered Delaware Bay,-— 
standing out again to sea arrived on the 2d of September in 
sight of the " high hills " of Neversink, pronouncing it " a 
good land to fall in with, and a pleasant land to see," and on 
the following morning, sending his boat before him to sound 
the way, passed Sandy Hook, and there came to anchor, on 
the third of September, 1609 ; two hundred and forty-seven 
years ago, next Wednesday. What an event, my friends, in 
the history of American population, enterprise, commerce, 
intelligence, and power, — the dropping of that anchor at 
Sandy Hook! 

Here he lingered a week, in friendly intercourse with the 
natives of New Jersey, while a boat's company explored the 
waters up to Newark Bay. And now the great question. 
Shall he turn back like Verazzano, or ascend the stream ? 
Hudson was of a race and in an employ, not prone to turn 
back, by sea or by land. On the 11th of September he raised 
the anchor of the " Half-moon," passed through the Narrows, 
beholding on both sides " as beautiful a land as one can tread 
on ; " and floated cautiously and slowly up the noble stream, 
the first ship that ever rested on its bosom. He passed the Pal- 
isades, nature's dark basaltic MalakofT; forced the iron gate- 
way of the Highlands, and anchored on the 14th, near West 
Point ; swept onward and upward the following day by grassy 
meadows and tangled slopes, hereafter to be covered with smil- 



ing villages ; — by elevated banks and woody heights, the des- 
tined site of future towns and cities, — tot egregias urbes. — of 
Newburg, Poughkeepsie, Catskih ; — on the evening of the loth 
arrived opposite ;i the mountains which lie from the river side," 
where he found " a very loving people and very old men ; " 
and the day following reached the spot, hereafter to be hon- 
ored by his own illustrious name. One more dav wafts him 
up between Schodac and Castleton, and here he landed and 
passed a day with the natives, — greeted with all sorts of bar- 
barous hospitality, — the land - the finest for cultivation he 
ever set foot on," the natives so kind and gentle that, when 
they found he would not remain with them over night, and 
feared that he left them, — poor children of nature, — because 
' he was afraid of their weapons, he, whose quarter-deck was 
heavy with ordnance, they " broke their arrows in pieces, and 
threw them in the fire." On the following morning, with the 
early flood-tide, on the 19th of September, 1609, the Half- 
moon " ran higher up two leagues above the Shoals," and 
came to anchor in deep water, near the site of the present 
city of Albany. Happy, if he could have closed his gallant 
career, on the banks of the stream which so justly bears his 
name, and thus have escaped the sorrowful and mysterious 
catastrophe which awaited him in the Arctic waters, the next 
year! 

But the discovery of your great river and of the site of your 
ancient city is not the only event, which renders the year 
1609 memorable in the annals of America and the world. It 
was one of those years, in which a sort of sympathetic move- 
ment toward great results unconsciously pervades the races 
and the minds of men. While Hudson was exploring this 
mighty river and this vast region for the Dutch East India 
Company, Champlain, in the same year, carried the lilies of 
France to the beautiful lake which bears his name on your 
northern limits : — the languishing establishments of England 
in Virginia were strengthened by the second charter granted 



8 

to that colony ; — the little church of Robinson removed from 
Amsterdam to Leyden, from which, in a few years, they went 
forth, to lay the foundations of New England on Plymouth 
Rock ; — the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands, after 
that terrific struggle of forty years, (the commencement of 
which has just been embalmed by an American historian 
in a record worthy of the great event,) wrested from Spain 
the virtual acknowledgment of their independence in the 
Twelve Years' truce ; — and James the First, in the same year, 
granted to the British East India Company their first perma- 
nent charter ; corner-stone of an empire destined in two cen- 
turies to overshadow the East. 

One more incident is wanting to complete the list of the 
memorable occurrences which signalize the year 1609, and 
one most worthy to be remembered by us on this occasion. 
Contemporaneously with the events which I have enumer- 
ated, — eras of history, dates of empire, the starting point in 
some of the greatest political, social, and moral revolutions in 
our annals, an Italian astronomer, who had heard of the mag- 
nifying glasses which had been made in Holland by which 
distant objects could be brought seemingly near, caught at the 
idea, constructed a telescope, and pointed it to the heavens. 
Yes, my friends, in the same year in which Hudson discovered 
your river and the site of your ancient town, in which Robin- 
son made his melancholy Hegira from Amsterdam to Leyden, 
Galileo Galilei, with a telescope, the work of his own hands, 
discovered the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter ; 
and now, after the lapse of less than two centuries and a half, 
on a spot then imbosomed in the wilderness, the covert of 
some of the least civilized of all the races of men, we are 
assembled, descendants of the Hollanders, descendants of 
the Pilgrims, in this ancient and prosperous city, to inaugu- 
rate the establishment of a first class Astronomical Observa- 
tory. 

One more glance at your early history. Three years after 



the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, (for I delight to trace 
these kindly synchronisms,) Fort Orange was erected, in the 
centre of what is now the business part of the city of Albany, 
and a few years later, the little hamlet of Beverswyck began 
to nestle under its walls. Two centuries ago, my Albanian 
friends, this very year, your forefathers assembled, not certainly 
to inaugurate an observatory, but to lay the foundations of a 
new church in the place of the rude cabin which had hitherto 
served them in that capacity. It was built at the intersection 
of Yonker's and Handelaar's, better known to you as State 
and Market streets. Public and private liberality cooperated 
in the important work. The authorities at the fort gave 
fifteen hundred guilders ; — the Patroon of that early day, 
with the liberality coeval with the name and the race, con- 
tributed a thousand ; — while the inhabitants, for whose 
benefit it was erected, whose numbers were small and their 
resources smaller, subscribed twenty beavers, " for the purchase 
of an oaken pulpit in Holland." Whether the largest part of 
this subscription was bestowed by some liberal benefactress, 
tradition has not informed us. It has however informed us, 
as I learned a few hours since from Mr. Brodhead, that the 
corner-stone of the little church was laid by the Rev. Rutger 
Jacobsen ; and that his daughter married Jan Jansen Bleecker, 
from whom is lineally descended Mrs. Blandina Bleecker Dud- 
ley, to whom we are so largely indebted for this day's celebra- 
tion. 

Nor is the year 1656 memorable in the annals of Albany 
alone. In that same year your imperial metropolis, which 
had then recently been incorporated as a city by the name of 
New Amsterdam, was first carefully surveyed by official 
authority, and found to contain one hundred and twenty 
houses and one thousand inhabitants.* In eight years more 

* These historical notices, relative to the discovery of the river by Hudson, and 
the foundation of Albany, are for the most part abridged from Mr. Brodhead's 
excellent history of New York. 

2 



10 

New Netherland becomes New York ; Fort Orange, with its 
dependent hamlet, assumes the name of Albany ; — a century 
of various fortune succeeds, — the scourge of French and 
Indian war is rarely absent from the land, — every shock of 
European policy vibrates with electric rapidity across the 
Atlantic, but the year 1756 finds a population of three hun- 
dred thousand in your growing province. Albany, however, 
may still be regarded almost as a frontier settlement. Of the 
twelve counties into which the province was divided a hun- 
dred years ago, the county of Albany comprehended all that 
lay north and west of the city ; and the city itself contained 
but about three hundred and fifty houses. 

One more century ; another act in the great drama of em- 
pire ; another French and Indian war beneath the banners of 
England ; a successful revolution, of which some of the most 
momentous events occurred within your immediate neighbor- 
hood ; a union of States ; a constitution of federal govern- 
ment ; your population carried to the St. Lawrence and the 
great Lakes, and their waters poured into the Hudson ; your 
territory covered with a network of canals and railroads, filled 
with life, and action, and power, with all the works of peace- 
ful art and prosperous enterprise, with all the institutions 
which constitute and advance the civilization of the age, 
its population exceeding that of the Union at the date of the 
Revolution, your own numbers twice as large as those of 
the largest city of that day, you have met together, my 
friends, just two hundred years since the erection of the little 
church of Beverswyck, to dedicate a noble temple of science, 
and to take a becoming public notice of the establishment of 
an institution destined, as we trust, to exert a beneficial influ- 
ence on the progress of useful knowledge at home and 
abroad, and through that on the general cause of civilization. 

You will observe that I am careful to say the progress of 
science " at home and abroad ; " for the study of astronomy in 
this country, like that of many other branches of natural 



11 

science, has long since, I am happy to add, passed that point 
where it is content to repeat the observations and verify the 
results of European research. It has boldly and successfully 
entered the field of original investigation, discovery, and spec- 
ulation ; and there is not now a single department of the 
science in which the names of American observers and mathe- 
maticians are not cited by our brethren across the water, side 
by side with the most eminent of their European contempo- 
raries. 

This state of things is certainly recent. During the colonial 
period, and in the first generation after the Revolution, no de- 
partment of science was, for obvious causes, very extensively 
cultivated in America, — astronomy perhaps as much as the 
kindred branches. The improvement in the quadrant com- 
monly known as Hadley's had already been made at Phila- 
delphia by Godfrey in the early part of the last century, and 
the beautiful invention of the collimating telescope was made 
at a later period by Rittenhouse, an astronomer of distin- 
guished repute. The transits of Venus of 1761 and 1769 
were observed in different parts of the country ; orreries, a 
favorite scientific toy in the last century, were constructed in 
Philadelphia and Boston; and some respectable scientific 
essays are contained and valuable observations are recorded in 
the early volumes of the transactions of the Philosophical 
Society at Philadelphia and the American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences at Boston and Cambridge. But in the absence 
of a numerous class of men of science to encourage and aid 
each other, in a state of the country as yet too poor to extend 
a liberal patronage to the expensive arts, without observatories 
and without valuable instruments, little of importance could 
be expected in the higher walks of astronomical research. 

The greater the credit due for the achievement of an enter- 
prise commenced in the early part of the present century, and 
which would reflect honor on the science of any country and 
any age, I mean the translation and commentary on Laplace's 



12 

Mecanique Celeste, by Bowditch ; a work whose merit I am 
myself wholly unable to appreciate, but which I have been 
led to think places the learned translator and commentator on 
a level with the ablest astronomers and geometers of the day. 
This work may be considered as opening a new era in the 
history of American science. The country was still almost 
wholly deficient in instrumental power; but the want was 
generally felt by men of science, and the public mind in 
various parts of the Union began to be turned towards the 
means of supplying it. In 1825, President John Quincy 
Adams brought the subject of a National Observatory before 
congress. Political considerations prevented its being favor- 
ably entertained at that time ; and it was not till 1842, and as 
an incident of the exploring expedition, that an appropriation 
was made for a depot for the charts and instruments of the 
navy. On this modest basis has been reared the National 
Observatory at Washington ; an institution which has already 
taken and fully sustains an honorable position among the 
scientific establishments of the age. 

Besides the institution at Washington, fifteen or twenty 
observatories have, within the last few years, been established 
in different parts of the country, some of them on a modest 
scale for the gratification of the scientific taste and zeal of 
individuals, others on a broad foundation of expense and use- 
fulness. In these establishments, public and private, the 
means are provided for the highest order of astronomical ob- 
servation, research, and instruction. There is already in the 
country an amount of instrumental power (to which addition 
is constantly making), and of mathematical skill on the part 
of our men of science, adequate to a manly competition with 
their European contemporaries in astronomy and the branches 
of science theoretical and applied connected with it. - The 
proceedings of the present meeting of the American Asso- 
ciation fully justify this remark. The fruits are already before 
the world in the triangulation of several of the States, in the 



13 

great work of the coast survey, in the numerous scientific sur- 
veys of the interior of the continent, in the astronomical 
department of the exploring expedition, in the more recent 
scientific expedition to Chili ; — in the brilliant hydrographical 
labors of the observatory at Washington ; in the published 
observations of Washington and Cambridge ; in the general 
character of the contents of the journal conducted by the 
Nestor of American Science, now in its eighth lustrum, of the 
Sidereal Messenger, and the Astronomical Journal ; in the 
National Ephemeris ; in the great chronometrical expeditions 
to determine the longitude of Cambridge, better ascertained 
than that of Paris was till within the last year ; in the prompt 
rectification of the errors in the predicted elements of Nep- 
tune, in its identification with Lalande's missing star, and in 
the calculation of its ephemeris ; in the discovery of the satel- 
lite of Neptune, of the eighth satellite of Saturn, and of the 
innermost of its rings ; in the establishment, both by obser- 
vation and theory, of the non-solid character of Saturn's 
rings ; in the recent remarkable speculations on the nature of 
the Zodiacal light ; in the separation and measurement of 
many double and triple stars, amenable only to superior 
instrumental power ; in the immense labor already performed 
in preparing Star Catalogues, and in numerous accurate ob- 
servations of standard stars ; in the diligent and successful 
observation of the meteoric showers ; in an extensive series of 
magnetic observations ; in the discovery of an asteroid and 
ten or twelve telescopic comets ; in the resolution of nebulae, 
which have defied every thing in Europe but Lord Rosse's 
great Reflector ; in the application of electricity to the meas- 
urement of differences in longitude, in the corrected ascer- 
tainment of the velocity of the electro-magnetic fluid, and its 
truly wonderful uses in recording astronomical observations. 
These are but a portion of the achievements of American as- 
tronomical science within fifteen or twenty years, and fully 
justify the most sanguine anticipations of its further progress. 



14 

How far our astronomers may be able to pursue their re- 
searches, will depend upon the resources of our public insti- 
tutions, and the liberality of wealthy individuals in furnishing 
the requisite means. With the exception of the observatories 
at Washington and West Point, little can be done or expected 
to be done by the government of the Union or the States ; 
but in this, as in every thing else connected with the patronage 
of art and science, the great dependence, and may I not add 
the safe dependence"; as it ever has been, must continue to be 
upon the bounty of enlightened, liberal, and public-spirited 
individuals. 

It is by a signal exercise of this bounty, my friends, that 
we are called together to-day. The munificence of several 
citizens of this ancient city, among whom the first place is 
due to the generous lady, whose name has with great pro- 
priety been given to the institution, has furnished the means 
for the foundation of the Dudley Observatory at Albany. 
On a commanding elevation, on the northern edge of the 
city, liberally given for that purpose by the head of a family 
(Van Rensselaer) in which the patronage of science is heredi- 
tary, a building of ample dimensions has been erected, upon 
a plan which combines all the requisites of solidity, conven- 
ience, and taste. A large portion of the expense of the 
structure has been defrayed by Mrs. Blandina Dudley, to 
whose generosity, and that of several other public spirited 
individuals, the institution is also indebted for the provision 
which has been made for an adequate supply of first-class 
instruments, executed and to be executed by the most emi- 
nent makers in Europe and America; and which, it is con- 
fidently expected, will yield to none of their class in any 
observatory in the world.* 

With a liberal supply of instrumental power; established 

* For this description of the Dudley Observatory, I am indebted to a valuable 
article on American Observatories by Professor Loomis in Harper's Magazine for 
June, 1856, p. 49. 



15 

in a community to whose intelligence and generosity its sup- 
port may be safely confided, and whose educational institu- 
tions are rapidly realizing the conception of a university ; 
countenanced by the gentleman who conducts the United 
States Coast Survey with such scientific skill and adminis- 
trative energy, and by the men of science generally in the 
United States ; committed to the immediate supervision of an 
astronomer (Dr. B. A. Gould, Jr.), to whose distinguished tal- 
ent has been added the advantage of a thorough scientific 
education in the most renowned universities of Europe, and 
who, as the editor of the American Astronomical Journal, has 
shown himself to be fully qualified for the high trust ; — under 
these favorable circumstances, the Dudley Observatory at Al- 
bany now takes its place among the scientific foundations of 
the country and the world. 

It is no affected modesty which leads me to express the 
regret that this interesting occasion could not have taken 
place under somewhat different auspices. I feel that the duty 
of addressing this great and enlightened assembly, compris- 
ing so much of the intelligence of the community and of 
the science of the country, ought to have been elsewhere 
assigned ; that it should have devolved upon some one of the 
eminent persons, many of whom I see around me, to whom 
you have been listening the past week, who as observers and 
geometers could have treated the subject with a master's 
power ; astronomers, whose telescopes have penetrated the 
depths of the heavens, or mathematicians, whose analysis un- 
threads the maze of their wondrous mechanism. If, instead 
of commanding, as you easily could have done, qualifications 
of this kind, your choice has rather fallen on one, making no 
pretensions to the honorable name of a man of science, — but 
whose delight it has always been to turn aside from the dusty 
and thankless paths of active life, for an interval of recreation 
in the green fields of sacred nature in all her kingdoms, — it 
is, I presume, because you have desired, on an occasion of 



16 

this kind, necessarily of a popular character, that those views 
of the subject should be presented which address themselves 
to the general intelligence of the community, and not to its 
select scientific circles. For astronomy perhaps to a greater 
extent, than any other department of natural science, exhibits 
phenomena, which, while they task the highest powers of 
philosophical research, are also well adapted to arrest the 
attention of minds barely tinctured with scientific culture, 
and even to touch the sensibilities of the wholly uninstructed 
observer. The profound investigations of the chemist into 
the ultimate constitution of material nature, the minute re- 
searches of the physiologist into the secrets of animal life, 
the transcendental logic of the geometer bristling in a nota- 
tion, the very sight of which terrifies the uninitiated, are lost 
on the common understanding. But the unspeakable glories 
of the rising and the setting sun ; the serene majesty of 
the moon, as she walks in full-orbed brightness through the 
heavens ; the soft witchery of the morning and the evening 
star ; the imperial splendors of the firmament on a bright un- 
clouded night; the comet, whose streaming banner floats 
over half the sky, — these are objects which charm and aston- 
ish alike the philosopher and the peasant; — the mathemati- 
cian who weighs the masses and defines the orbits of the 
heavenly bodies, and the untutored observer who sees nothing 
beyond the images painted upon the eye. 

An astronomical observatory, in the general acceptation of 
the word, is a building erected for the reception and appro- 
priate use of astronomical instruments, and the accommoda- 
tion of the men of science employed in making and reducing 
observations of the heavenly bodies. These instruments are 
mainly of three classes, to which I believe all others of a 
strictly astronomical character may be referred. 

1st. The instruments, by which the heavens are inspected, 
with a view to discover the existence of those celestial bodies 
which are not visible to the naked eye, (beyond all compari- 



17 

son more numerous than those which are,) and to observe the 
magnitude, shapes, and other sensible qualities, both of those 
which are and those which are not thus visible to the unaided 
sight. The instruments of this class are designated by the 
general name of Telescope; and are of two kinds; — the re- 
fracting telescope, which derives its magnifying power from a 
system of convex lenses ; and the reflecting telescope, which 
receives the image of the heavenly body upon a concave 
mirror. 

2d. The second class of instruments consists of those, 
which are designed principally to measure the angular dis- 
tances of the heavenly bodies from each other, and then time 
of passing the meridian. The transit instrument, the merid- 
ian circle, the mural circle, the heliometer, and the sextant, 
belong to this class. The brilliant discoveries of astronomy 
are for the most part made with the first class of instruments ; 
— its practical results wrought out by the second. 

3d. The third class contains the clock, with its subsidiary 
apparatus for measuring the time and marking its subdi- 
visions, with the greatest possible accuracy ; — indispensable 
auxiliary of all the instruments, by which the positions and 
motions of the heavenly bodies are observed, and measured, 
and recorded. 

The telescope may be likened to a wondrous Cyclopean 
eye, endued with superhuman power, by which the astron- 
omer extends the reach of his vision to the further heavens, 
and surveys galaxies and universes compared with which the 
solar system is but an atom floating in the air. The transit 
may be compared to a measuring rod which he lays from 
planet to planet and from star to star, to ascertain and mark 
off the heavenly spaces, and transfer them to his note-book. 
The clock is the marvellous apparatus by which he equalizes 
and divides into nicely measured parts a portion of that un- 
conceived infinity of duration, without beginning and without 

3 



18 

end, in which all existence floats as on a shoreless and bottom- 
less sea. 

In the contrivance and the execution of these instruments, 
the utmost stretch of inventive skill and mechanical ingenu- 
ity has been put forth. To such perfection have they been 
carried, that a single second of magnitude or space is ren- 
dered a distinctly visible and appreciable quantity. " The 
arc of a circle," says Sir J. Herschell, " subtended by one sec- 
ond, is less than the two hundred thousandth part of the 
radius, so that on a circle of six feet in diameter, it would 
occupy no greater linear extent than 5,^ part of an inch ; a 
quantity requiring a powerful microscope to be discerned at 
all."* The largest body in our system, the sun, whose real 
diameter is 882,000 miles subtends, at a distance of 95,000,000 
miles, but an angle of a little more than 32 r ; while so ad- 
mirably are the best instruments constructed, that both in 
Europe and America a satellite of Neptune, an object of com- 
paratively inconsiderable diameter, has been discovered at a 
distance of 2,850 millions of miles. 

The object of an Observatory, erected and supplied with 
instruments of this admirable construction and at proportion- 
ate expense, is, as I have already intimated, to provide for an 
accurate and systematic survey of the heavenly bodies, with 
a view to a more correct and extensive acquaintance with 
those already known, and as instrumental power and skill in 
using it increase, to the discovery of bodies hitherto invisible, 
and in both classes of objects to the determination of their 
distances, their times of passing the meridian, their relations 
to each other, and the laws which govern their movements. 

Why should we wish to obtain this knowledge ? What 
inducement is there to expend large sums of money in the 
erection of Observatories, in furnishing them with costly in- 

* Herschell's Outlines of Astronomy, § 131. 



19 

struments, and in the support of the men of science employed 
in making, discussing, and recording, for successive genera- 
tions, these minute observations of the heavenly bodies ? 

In an exclusively scientific treatment of this subject, an 
inquiry into its utilitarian relations would be superfluous, — 
even wearisome. But on an occasion like the present, you 
will not, perhaps, think it out of place, if I briefly answer the 
question what is the use of an astronomical observatory, and 
what benefit may be expected from the operations of such an 
establishment in a community like ours ? 

I. In the first place, then, we derive from the observations 
of the heavenly bodies which are made at an observatory, 
our only adequate measures of time and our only means of 
comparing the time of one place with the time of another. 
Our artificial timekeepers — clocks, watches, and chronome- 
ters — however ingeniously contrived and admirably fabri- 
cated, are but a transcript, so to say, of the celestial motions, 
and would be of no value without the means of regulating 
them by observation. It is impossible for them under any 
circumstances to escape the imperfection of all machinery, 
the work of human hands ; — and the moment we remove 
with our timekeeper east or west, it fails us. It will keep 
home time alone, like the fond traveller who leaves his heart 
behind him. The artificial instrument is of incalculable 
utility, but must itself be regulated by the eternal clock-work 
of the skies. 

This single consideration is sufficient to show how com- 
pletely the daily business of life is affected and controlled by 
the heavenly bodies. It is they and not our main-springs, our 
expansion balances, and our compensation pendulums, which 
give us our time. To reverse the line of Pope, — 

'T is with our watches as our judgments ; none 
Go just alike, but each believes his own ; — 

But for all the kindreds and tribes and tongues of men, — 



20 

each upon their own meridian, — from the Arctic pole to the 
equator, from the equator to the Antarctic pole, the eternal 
sun strikes twelve at noon, and the glorious constellations, far 
up in the everlasting belfries of the skies, chime twelve at 
midnight; — twelve for the pale student over his flickering 
lamp, twelve amid the flaming wonders of Orion's belt, if he 
crosses the meridian at that fated hour ; — twelve by the 
weary couch of languishing humanity, twelve in the star- 
paved courts of the Empyrean ; — twelve for the heaving tides 
of the ocean ; twelve for the weary arm of labor ; twelve for 
the toiling brain ; twelve for the watching, waking, broken 
heart ; twelve for the meteor which blazes for a moment and 
expires ; twelve for the comet whose period is measured by 
centuries ; twelve for every substantial, for every imaginary 
thing, which exists in the sense, the intellect, or the fancy, 
and which the speech or thought of man, at the given merid- 
ian, refers to the lapse of time. 

Not only do we resort to the observation of the heavenly 
bodies for the means of regulating and rectifying our clocks, 
but the great divisions of day and month and year are derived 
from the same source. By the constitution of our nature the 
elements of our existence are closely connected with the celes- 
tial times. Partly by his physical organization, partly by the 
habit, — second nature, — of the race from the dawn of crea- 
tion, man as he is and the times and seasons of the heavenly 
bodies are part and parcel of one system. The first great 
division of time, the day-night (nychthemerum), for which we 
have no precise synonym in our language, with its primal 
alternation of waking and sleeping, of labor and rest, is a 
vital condition of the existence of such a creature as man. 
The revolution of the year, with its various incidents of sum- 
mer and winter and seed-time and harvest, is not less involved 
in all our social material and moral progress. It is true that 
at the poles and on the equator, the effects of these revolu- 
tions are variously modified or wholly disappear, but as the 



21 

necessary consequence, human life is extinguished at the 
poles, and on the equator attains only a languid or feverish 
development.* Those latitudes only, in which the great mo- 
tions and cardinal positions of the earth exert a mean influ- 
ence, exhibit man in the harmonious expansion of his powers. 
The lunar period, which lies at the foundation of the month, 
is less vitally connected with human existence and develop- 
ment ; but is proved by the experience of every age and race 
to be eminently conducive to the progress of civilization and 
culture. 

But indispensable as are these heavenly measures of time 
to our life and progress, and obvious as are the phenomena 
on which they rest, yet, owing to the circumstance that, in 
the economy of nature, the day, the month, and the year are 
not exactly commensurable, some of the most difficult ques- 
tions in practical astronomy are those, by which an accurate 
division of time, applicable to the various uses of man, is 
derived from the observation of the heavenly bodies. I have 
no doubt that, to the Supreme Intelligence which created and 
rules the universe, there is a harmony hidden to us in the 
numerical relation to each other of days, months, and years ; 
but in our ignorance of that harmony, their practical ad- 
justment to each other is a work of difficulty. The great 
embarrassment which attended the reformation of the calen- 
dar, after the error of the Julian period had, in the lapse of 
centuries, reached ten (or rather twelve) days, sufficiently 
illustrates this remark. It is most true that scientific difficul- 
ties did not form the chief obstacle. Having been proposed 
under the auspices of the Roman Pontiff, the protestant world, 
for a century and more, rejected the new style. It was in 
various places the subject of controversy, collision, and blood- 
shed, f It was not adopted in England till nearly two cen- 



* Guyot, Earth and Man, p. 231 et seq. 
t Stern's Himmelskunde, p. 72. 



22 

turies after its introduction at Rome ; and in the country of 
the Struves and the Pulkova equatorial, they persist at the 
present day, for civil purposes, in adding eleven minutes and 
twelve seconds to the length of the tropical year. 

II. The second great practical use of an Astronomical Ob- 
servatory is connected with the science of Geography. The 
first page of the history of our continent illustrates this con- 
nection. Profound meditation on the sphericity of the earth 
was one of the main reasons which led Columbus to under- 
take his momentous voyage, and his thorough acquaintance 
with the astronomical science of that day was, in his own 
judgment, what enabled him to overcome the almost innu- 
merable obstacles which attended its prosecution.* In return, 
I find that Copernicus, in the very commencement of his im- 
mortal work,f appeals to the discovery of America as com- 
pleting the demonstration of the sphericity of the earth. 
Much of our knowledge of the figure, size, density, and po- 
sition of the earth as a member of the solar system is 
derived from this science, and it furnishes us the means of 
performing the most important operations of practical geog- 
raphy. Latitude and longitude, which lie at the basis of all 
descriptive geography, are determined by observation. No 
map deserves the name, on which the position of important 
points has not been astronomically determined. Some even 
of our most important political and administrative arrange- 
ments depend upon the cooperation of this science. Among 
these I may mention the land-system of the United States, 
and the determination of the boundaries of the country. 

I believe that till it was done by the Federal Government, 
a uniform system of mathematical survey had never in any 
country been applied to an extensive territory. Large grants 
and sales of public land took place before the Revolution and 



* Humboldt, Histoire de la geographie, etc. Tom. I. p. 17. 
f Copernicus de Eevolutionibus orbium coelestium, Fol. 2. 



23 

in the interval between the peace and the adoption of the 
Constitution ; but the limits of these grants and sales were 
ascertained by sensible objects, by trees, streams, rocks, hills, 
and by reference to adjacent portions of territory, previously 
surveyed. The uncertainty of boundaries thus denned was a 
never-failing source of litigation. Large tracts of land in the 
Western country granted by Virginia, under this old system 
of special and local survey, were covered with conflicting 
claims, and the controversies to which they gave rise formed 
no small part of the business of the Federal Court after its 
organization. But the adoption of the present land-system 
brought order out of chaos. The entire public domain is now 
scientifically surveyed before it is offered for sale ; it is laid 
off into ranges, townships, sections, and smaller divisions with 
unerring accuracy, resting on the foundation of base and me- 
ridian lines ; — and I have been informed that under this 
system, scarce a case of contested location and boundary has 
ever presented itself in court. The general land-office con- 
tains maps and plans, in which every quarter-section of the 
public land is laid down with mathematical precision. The 
superficies of half a continent is thus transferred in miniature 
to the bureaus at Washington; — while the local land-offices 
contain transcripts of these plans, copies of which are fur- 
nished to the individual purchaser. When we consider the 
tide of population annually flowing into the public domain, 
and the immense importance of its efficient and economical 
administration, the utility of this application of astronomy 
will be duly estimated.* 

I will here venture to repeat an anecdote which I heard 
lately from a son of the late Hon. Timothy Pickering. Mr. 
Octavius Pickering, on behalf of his father,, had applied to 
Mr. David Putnam of Marietta, to act as his legal adviser, 



* See an article on the Public Lands by the author of this Address, American 
Almanac for 1832, p. 145. 



24 

with respect to certain land claims in the Virginia military 
district, in the State of Ohio. Mr. Putnam declined the 
agency. He had had much to do with business of that kind 
and found it beset with endless litigation. " I have never," he 
adds, " succeeded but in a single case, and that was a location 
and survey made by General Washington before the Revolu- 
tion, and I am not acquainted with any surveys, except those 
made by him, but what have been litigated." 

At this moment, a most important survey of the coast of the 
United States is in progress ; an operation of the utmost con- 
sequence, in reference to the geography, commerce, navigation, 
and hydrography of the country. The entire work, I need 
scarce say, is one of practical astronomy. The scientific 
establishment which we this day inaugurate is looked to for 
important cooperation in this great undertaking ; — and will 
no doubt contribute efficiently to its prosecution. 

Astronomical observation furnishes by far the best means of 
defining the boundaries of States, when the lines are of great 
length and run through unsettled countries. Natural indica- 
tions like rivers and mountains, however distinct in appear- 
ances, are in practice subject to unavoidable error. By the 
treaty of 1783, a boundary was established between the United 
States and Great Britain, depending partly on the course of 
rivers, and upon the highlands dividing the waters which flow 
into the Atlantic Ocean from those which flow into the St. 
Lawrence. It took twenty years to find out which river was 
the true St. Croix, that being the starting point. England 
then having made the extraordinary discovery that the Bay of 
Fundy is not a part of the Atlantic Ocean, forty years more 
were passed in the unsuccessful attempt to re-create the High- 
lands which this strange doctrine had annihilated ; and just 
as the two countries were on the verge of a war, the contro- 
versy was settled by compromise. Had the boundary been 
accurately described by lines of latitude and longitude, no dis- 
pute could have arisen. No dispute arose as to the boundary 



25 

between the United States and Spain, and her successor, 
Mexico, where it runs through untrodden deserts, and over 
pathless mountains, along the forty-second degree of latitude. 
The identity of rivers may be disputed as in the case of the 
St. Croix ; the course of mountain chains is too broad for a 
dividing line ; the division of streams, as experience has 
shown, is uncertain, but a degree of latitude is written on the 
heavenly sphere ; and nothing but an observation is required 
to read the record. 

But scientific elements, like sharp instruments, must be 
handled with care. A part of our boundary between the 
British Provinces ran upon the forty-fifth degree of latitude ; 
and about forty years ago, an expensive fortress was com- 
menced by the government of the United States at Rouse's 
Point, on Lake Champlain, on a spot intended to be just 
within our limits. When the line came to be more carefully 
surveyed the fortress turned out to be on the wrong side ; we 
had been building an expensive fortification for our neighbor. 
But in the general compromises of the Treaty of Washington 
by the Webster and Ashburton Treaty of the 9th of August, 
1842, the fortress was left within our limits.* 

Errors still more serious had nearly resulted a few years 
since in a war with Mexico. By the treaty of Guadalupe Hi- 
dalgo, of the 2d of February, 1848, the boundary line between 
the United States and that country was in part described by 
reference to the town of El Paso, as laid down on a speci- 
fied map of the United States, of which a copy was appended 
to the treaty. This boundary was to be surveyed and run 
by a joint commission of men of science. It soon appeared 
that errors of two or three degrees existed in the projection of 
the map. Its lines of latitude and longitude did not conform 
to the topography of the region ; so that it was impossible to 
execute the text of the treaty. The famous Mesilla Valley 

* Webster's Works, Vol. I. pp. 110, 115. 

4 



26 

was a part of the debatable ground, and the sum of ten mill- 
ions of dollars paid to the Mexican government, for that and 
for an additional strip of territory on the south-west, was the 
smart-money, which expiated the inaccuracy of the map ; the 
necessary result perhaps of the want of good materials for its 
construction. Ten millions of dollars would have gone a 
good way toward the expense of a National Observatory and 
of a map of the continent, constructed with entire accuracy. 

It became my official duty, in London, a few years ago, to 
apply to the British government for an authentic statement of 
their claim to jurisdiction over New Zealand. The official 
Gazette for the 2d of October, 1840, was sent me from the 
Foreign office, as affording the desired information. This num- 
ber of the Gazette contained the proclamations issued by the 
lieutenant-governor of New Zealand " in pursuance of the 
instructions he received from the Marquess of Normanby, one 
of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State," asserting the 
jurisdiction of his government over the islands of New Zealand, 
and declaring them to extend " from thirty-four degrees thirty 
minutes north, to forty-seven degrees ten minutes south lati- 
tude." It is scarcely necessary to say, that south latitude 
was intended in both instances. This error of sixty-nine 
degrees of latitude, which would have extended the claim of 
British jurisdiction over the whole breadth of the Pacific, had 
apparently escaped the notice of that government. 

It would be easy to multiply illustrations of the great prac- 
tical importance of accurate scientific designations drawn 
from astronomical observation, in various relations connected 
with boundaries, surveys, and other geographical purposes ; 
but I must hasten to 

III. A third important department, in which the services 
rendered by astronomy are equally conspicuous. I refer to 
commerce and navigation. It is chiefly owing-. to the results 
of astronomical observation, that modern commerce has at- 
tained such a vast expansion, compared with that of the 



27 

ancient world. I have already reminded you that accurate 
astronomical notions contributed materially to the conception 
in the mind of Colambus of his immortal enterprise, and to 
the practical success with which it was conducted. It was 
mainly his skill in the use of astronomical instruments, imper- 
fect as they were, which enabled him, in spite of the bewil- 
dering variations of the compass, to find his way across the 
ocean. 

With the progress of the true system of the universe 
towards general adoption, the problem of finding the longi- 
tude at sea presented itself. This was the avowed object of 
the foundation of the Observatory at Greenwich,* and no one 
subject has received more of the attention of astronomers 
than those investigations of the lunar theory, on which the 
requisite tables of the navigator are founded. The pathways 
of the ocean are marked out in the sky above. The eternal 
lights of the heavens are the only Pharos whose beams never 
fail ; which no tempest can shake from its foundation. 
Within my recollection, it was deemed a necessary qualifica- 
tion for the master and the mate of a merchant-ship, and 
even for a prime hand, to be able to " work a lunar," as it was 
called.f The improvements in the chronometer have in prac- 

=* Grant's History of Physical Astronomy, p. 460. 

t The following amusing anecdote is found in Baron Zach's Correspondence Astro- 
nomique,Yo\. IV. p. 62. It is a part of the Baron's account of his visit to Cleopatra's 
Barge, winch entered the harbor of Genoa in 1817. The Baron was told by the pro- 
prietor and commander of the vessel, that his black cook could find the ship's longi- 
tude by observation. " ' There he is/ said the young man, pointing to a negro at 
the stern of the vessel, in his white apron, with a fowl in one hand, and a dressing- 
knife in the other. ' Come here, John, cried the captain, this gentleman is sur- 
prised at your calculating the longitude ; tell him about it. Zaeli. What method do 
you employ in calculating the longitude by lunar distances ? The Cook. It is indiffer- 
ent to me. I make. use of the method of Maskelyne, Lyons, of Witchell, and of 
Bowditch ; but I prefer Dunthorne, with which I am more familiar and which is 
shorter.' I could not express my surprise at language like this from a black cook, 
with a bleeding fowl in one hand, and a larding-knife in the other." 

Dr. Bowditch in early life was supercargo of a vessel trading to the East. His 



28 

tice, to a great extent, superseded this laborious operation, but 
Observation remains, and unquestionably will for ever remain, 
the only dependence for ascertaining the ship's time and 
deducing the longitude from the comparison of that time with 
the chronometer. 

It may perhaps be thought that astronomical science is 
brought already to such a state of perfection, that nothing 
more is to be desired, or at least that nothing more is attain- 
able in reference to such practical applications as I have 
described. This, however, is an idea which generous minds 
will reject, in this as in every other department of human 
knowledge. In astronomy, as in every thing else, the discov- 
eries already made, theoretical or practical, instead of exhaust- 
ing the science, or putting a limit to its advancement, do but 
furnish the means and instruments of further progress. I 
have no doubt we live on the verge of discoveries and inven- 
tions in every department, as brilliant as any that have ever 
been made ; that there are new truths, new facts ready to 
start into recognition on every side ; and it seems to me there 
never was an age since the dawn of time, when men ought to 
be less disposed to rest satisfied with the progress already 
made, than the age in which we live ; for there never was an 
age more distinguished for ingenious research, for novel result, 
and bold generalization. 

That no further improvement is desirable in the means and 
methods of ascertaining the ship's place at sea, no one I 
think will from experience be disposed to assert. The last 



captain, being asked, on one occasion, at Manilla, how he had contrived to find his 
way, in the face of a north-east monsoon, by mere dead reckoning-, replied, " that he 
had a crew of twelve men, every one of whom could take and work a lunar obser- 
vation as well, for all practical purposes, as Sir Isaac Newton himself, were he alive." 
During this conversation, Dr. Bowditch sat, " as modest as a maid, saying not a word, 
but holding his slate pencil in his mouth," while another person remarked that, 
"there was more knowledge of navigation on board that ship, than there was in all 
the vessels that have floated in Manilla bay." — Memoir of Dr. Bowditch, by 
Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch, p. 29. 



29 

time I crossed the Atlantic I walked the quarter-deck with the 
officer in charge of the noble vessel, on one occasion, when we 
were driving along before a leading breeze and under a head 
of steam, beneath a starless sky at midnight, at the rate cer- 
tainly of ten or eleven miles an hour. There is something 
sublime, but approaching the terrible, in such a scene; — the 
rayless gloom, the midnight chill, the awful swell of the 
deep, the dismal moan of the wind through the rigging, 
the all but volcanic fires within the hold of the ship ; — I 
scarce know an occasion in ordinary life in which a reflecting 
mind feels more keenly its hopeless dependence on irrational 
forces beyond its own control. I asked my companion how 
nearly he could determine his ship's place at sea under favor- 
able circumstances. Theoretically, he answered, I think, 
within a mile ; practically and usually within three or four. 
My next question was, How near do you think we may be to 
Cape Race ? — that dangerous headland which pushes its 
iron-bound unlighted bastions from the shore of Newfound- 
land far into the Atlantic, — first land-fall to the homeward- 
bound American vessel.* We must, said he, by our last obser- 
vations and reckoning, be within three or four miles of Cape 
Race. A comparison of these two remarks, under the cir- 
cumstances in which we were placed at the moment, brought 
my mind to the conclusion, that it is greatly to be wished 
that the means should be discovered of finding the ship's 
place more accurately, or that navigators would give Cape 
Race a little wider berth. Still I do not remember that one 
of the steam-packets between England and America was ever 
lost upon that formidable point. 

It appears to me by no means unlikely that, with the im- 
provement of instrumental power, and of the means of ascer- 
taining the ship's time with exactness, as great an advance 



* Since the voyage in question was made (in 1845), a light-house has been built 
on Cape Race. 



30 

beyond the present state of art and science in finding a ship's 
place at sea may take place, as was effected by the invention 
of the reflecting quadrant, the calculation of lunar tables, and 
the improved construction of chronometers. 

In the wonderful versatility of the human mind, the im- 
provement, when it takes place, will very probably be made 
by paths where it is least expected. The great inducement of 
Mr. Babbage to attempt the construction of an engine, by 
which astronomical tables could be calculated, and even 
printed, by mechanical means and with entire accuracy, was 
the errors in the requisite tables. Nineteen such errors, in 
point of fact, were discovered in an edition of Taylor's loga- 
rithms printed in 1796 ; some of which might have led to 
the most dangerous results in calculating a ship's place. 
These nineteen errors (of which one only was an error of the 
press) were pointed out in the Nautical Almanac for 1832. 
In one of these errata the seat of the error was stated to be 
in cosine of 14° 18' 3". Subsequent examination showed 
that there was an error of one second in this correction, and 
accordingly in the Nautical Almanac of the next year a new 
correction was necessary. But in making the new correction 
of one second, a new error was committed of ten degrees. 
Instead of cosine 14° 18' 2", the correction was printed cosine 
4° 18' 2", making it still necessary, in some future edition of 
the Nautical Almanac, to insert an erratum in an erratum of 
the errata in Taylor's logarithms.* 

In the hope of obviating the possibility of such errors, Mr. 
Babbage projected his calculating, or, as he prefers to call it, 
his difference machine. Although this extraordinary under- 
taking has been arrested in consequence of the enormous 
expense attending its execution, enough has been achieved to 
show the mechanical possibility of constructing an engine of 
this kind, and even one of far higher powers, of which Mr. 

* Edinburgh Review, Vol. LIX. p. 282. 



31 

Babbage has matured the conception, devised the notation, 
and executed in part the drawings, — themselves an imperish- 
able monument of the genius of the author. 

I happened on one occasion to be in company with this 
highly distinguished man of science, whose social qualities 
are as pleasing as his constructive talent is marvellous, when 
another eminent savant, Count Strzelecki, just returned from 
his Oriental and Australian tour, observed that he found 
among the Chinese a great desire to know something more of 
Mr. Babbage's calculating machine, and especially whether 
like their own sivanpan it could be made to go into the pocket. 
Mr. Babbage good-humoredly observed that thus far he had 
been very much out of pocket with it. 

Whatever advances may be made in astronomical science, 
theoretical or applied, I am strongly inclined to think that 
they will be made in connection with an increased command 
of instrumental power. The natural order in which the 
human mind proceeds in the acquisition of astronomical 
knowledge, is minute and accurate observation of the phe- 
nomena of the heavens, the skilful discussion and analysis of 
these observations, and sound philosophy in generalizing the 
results. 

In pursuing this course, however, a difficulty presented itself, 
which for ages proved insuperable, and which to the same ex- 
tent has existed in no other science, namely, that all the lead- 
ing phenomena are in their appearance delusive. It is indeed 
true that in all sciences, superficial observation can only lead, 
except by chance, to superficial knowledge ; but I know of no 
branch in which, to the same degree as in astronomy, the 
great leading phenomena are the reverse of true, while they 
yet appeal so strongly to the senses, that sagacious philos- 
ophers in antiquity who could foretell eclipses, and who dis- 
covered the precession of the equinoxes, still believed that the 
earth was at rest in the centre of the universe, and that all the 



32 

hosts of heaven performed a daily revolution about it as a 
centre. 

It usually happens in scientific progress, that when a great 
fact is at length discovered, it approves itself at once to all 
competent judges. It furnishes a solution to so many problems 
and harmonizes with so many other facts, that all the other 
data, as it were, crystallize at once about it. In modern times 
we have often witnessed such an impatience, so to say, of 
great truths to be discovered, that it has frequently happened 
that they have been found out simultaneously by more than 
one individual. A disputed question of priority is an event 
of very common occurrence. Not so with the true theory 
of the heavens. So complete is the deception practised on 
the senses, that it failed more than once to yield to the an- 
nouncement of the truth ; and it was only when the visual 
organs were armed with an almost preternatural instrumental 
power, that the great fact found admission to the human 
mind. 

It is supposed that in the very infancy of science, Pythag- 
oras or his disciples explained the apparent motion of the 
heavenly bodies about the earth, by the diurnal revolution of 
the earth on its axis. But this theory, though bearing so 
deeply impressed upon it the great seal of truth, simplicity, 
was in such glaring contrast with the evidence of the senses, 
that it failed of acceptance in antiquity or the middle ages. 
It found no favor with minds like those of Aristotle, Archim- 
edes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, or any of the acute and learned 
Arabian or mediaeval astronomers. All then ingenuity and 
all their mathematical skill were exhausted in the devel- 
opment of a wonderfully complicated and ingenious but 
erroneous theory. The great master truth, rejected for its 
simplicity, lay, disregarded, at their feet. 

At the second dawn of science, the great fact again beamed 
into the mind of Copernicus. Now, at least, in that glorious 
age which witnessed the invention of printing, the great 



33 

mechanical engine of intellectual progress, and the discovery 
of America, we may expect that this long-hidden revelation, a 
second time proclaimed, will command the assent of man- 
kind. But the sensible phenomena were still too strong for 
the theory; — the glorious delusion of the rising and the set- 
ting sun could not be overcome. Tycho de Brahe furnished 
his observatory with instruments superior in number and 
quality to all that had been collected before ; but the great 
instrument of discovery, which, by augmenting the optic 
power of the eye, enables it to penetrate beyond the appar- 
ent phenomena and to discern the true constitution of the 
heavenly bodies, was wanting at Uranienburg. The observa- 
tions of Tycho, as discussed by Keppler, conducted that most 
fervid, powerful, and sagacious mind to the discovery of some 
of the most important laws of the celestial motions ; but it 
was not till Galileo, at Florence, had pointed his telescope 
to the sky, that the Copernican system could be said to be 
firmly established in the scientific world.* 

On this great name, my friends, assembled as we are to 
dedicate a temple to instrumental Astronomy, we may well 
pause for a moment. 

There is much, in every way, in the city of Florence to 
excite the curiosity, to kindle the imagination, and to gratify 
the taste. Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills of 
Fiesole, whose Cyclopean walls carry back the antiquary 
to ages before the Roman, before the Etruscan power, the 
flowery city (Fiorenza) covers the sunny banks of the Arno 
with its stately palaces. Dark and frowning piles of me- 
diaeval structure, a majestic dome the prototype of St. Peter's, 
basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest 
of the dead, the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the cam- 

* It is another interesting coincidence of events in the year 1609, that Keppler's 
works de Motu Mortis and Astronomia Nova, in which his two first laws are pro- 
pounded, appeared in this year. I am indebted for this suggestion to Dr. B. A. 
Gould, Jun. 

5 



34 

panile, the house of Michael Angelo still occupied by a de- 
scendant of his lineage and name, — his hammer, his chisel, his 
dividers, his manuscript poems, all as if he had left them but 
yesterday ; — airy bridges which seem not so much to rest on 
the earth as to hover over the waters they span ; — the love- 
liest creations of ancient art, rescued from the grave of ages 
again to "enchant the world;" — the breathing marbles of 
Michael Angelo, the glowing canvas of Raphael and Titian ; 

— museums filled with medals and coins of every age from 
Cyrus the younger, and gems and amulets and vases from the 
sepulchres of Egyptian Pharoahs coeval with Joseph, and 
Etruscan Lucumons that swayed Italy before the Romans; — 
libraries stored with the choicest texts of ancient literature; 

— gardens of rose and orange and pomegranate and myrtle ; 

— the very air you breathe languid with music and perfume, — 
such is Florence. But among all its fascinations addressed 
to the sense, the memory, and the heart, there was none to 
which I more frequently gave a meditative hour during a 
year's residence, than to the spot where Galileo Galilei sleeps 
beneath the marble floor of Santa Croce ; no building on 
which I gazed with greater reverence, than I did upon the 
modest mansion at Arcetri, villa at once and prison, in which 
that venerable sage, by command of the Inquisition, passed 
the sad closing years of his life; — the beloved daughter on 
whom he had depended to smoothe his passage to the grave 
laid there before him ; the eyes with which he had discovered 
worlds before unknown, quenched in blindness : — 



Ahime ! quegli occhi si son fatti oscuri, 
Che vider piu di tutti i tempi antichi, 
E luce fur dei secoli futuri. 



That was the house " where," says Milton, (another of 
those of whom the world was not worthy,) " I found and 
visited the famous Galileo, grown old, — a prisoner to the 



35 

Inquisition, for thinking on astronomy, otherwise than as 
the Dominican and Franciscan licensers thought." * Great 
heavens! what a tribunal, what a culprit, what a crime! 
Let us thank God, my friends, that we live in the nineteenth 
century. Of all the wonders of ancient and modern art, 
statues and paintings, and jewels and manuscripts, the admi- 
ration and the delight of ages, — there was nothing which I 
beheld with more affectionate awe, than that poor rough tube, 
a few feet in length, the work of his own hands, that very 
" optic glass " through which the " Tuscan Artist " viewed 
the moon, 

" At evening from the top of Fesole 
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
Eivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe : " 

that poor little spy-glass (for it is scarcely more) through 
which the human eye first distinctly beheld the surface of the 
moon, — first discovered the phases of Venus, the satellites of 
Jupiter, and the seeming handles of Saturn, — first penetrated 
the dusky depths of the heavens, — first pierced the clouds of 
visual error, which from the creation of the world involved 
the system of the Universe. 

There are occasions in life in which a great mind lives 
years of rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emo- 
tions of Galileo, when, first raising the newly constructed 
telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy 
of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the 
moon. It was such another moment as that when the im- 
mortal printers of Mentz and Strasburg received the first copy 
of the Bible into their hands, the work of their divine Art ; — 
like that when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the 12th 
October, 1492,' (Copernicus, at the age of eighteen, was then 

* Milton's Prose Works, Vol. I. p. 313. 



36 

a student at Cracow,) * beheld the shores of San Salvador ; — 
like that when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to 
the intellect of Newton ; — like that when Franklin saw by the 
stiffening fibres of the hempen cord of his kite, that he held 
the lightning in his grasp ; — like that when Leverrier received 
back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was 
found. 

Yes, noble Galileo, thou art right, E pur si muove. " It does 
move." Bigots may make thee recant it ; but it moves never- 
theless. Yes, the earth moves, and the planets move, and 
the mighty waters move, and the great sweeping tides of air 
move, and the empires of men move, — and the world of 
thought moves, ever onward and upward to higher facts and 
bolder theories. The Inquisition may seal thy lips, but they 
can no more stop the progress of the great truth propounded 
by Copernicus and demonstrated by thee, than they can stop 
the revolving earth. 

Close now, venerable sage, that sightless, tearful eye ; it 
has seen what man never before saw ; — it has seen enough. 
Hang up that poor little spy-glass ; it has done its work. Not 
Herschell nor Rosse has comparatively done more. Fran- 
ciscans and Dominicans deride thy discoveries now, but the 
time will come when from two hundred observatories in Eu- 
rope and America the glorious artillery of science shall nightly 
assault the skies, but they shall gain no conquests in those 
glittering fields before which thine shall be forgotten. Rest 
in peace, great Columbus of the heavens, like him scorned, 
persecuted, broken-hearted ; in other ages, in distant hemi- 
spheres, when the votaries of science, with solemn acts of con- 
secration, shall dedicate their stately edifices to the cause of 
knowledge and truth, thy name shall be mentioned with 
honor ! 

It is not my intention, in dwelling with such emphasis 

* Kopernik et ses Travaux, par Jean Czynski, p. 29. 



37 

upon the invention of the telescope, to ascribe undue impor- 
tance, in promoting the advancement of science, to the in- 
crease of instrumental power. Too much, indeed, cannot be 
said of the service rendered by its first application in confirm- 
ing and bringing into general repute the Copernican system ; 
but for a considerable time, little more was effected by the 
wondrous instrument, than the gratification of curiosity and 
taste by the inspection of the planetary phases, and the addi- 
tion of the rings and satellites of Saturn to the solar family. 
Newton, prematurely despairing of any further improvement 
in the refracting telescope, applied the principle of reflection, 
and the nicer observations now made, no doubt hastened the 
maturity of his great discovery of the law of gravitation ; 
but that discovery was the work of his transcendent genius 
and consummate skill. 

With Bradley in 1741, a new period commenced in instru- 
mental astronomy, not so much of discovery as of measure- 
ment.* The superior accuracy and minuteness, with which 
the motions and distances of the heavenly bodies were now 
observed, resulted in the accumulation of a mass of new 
materials both for tabular comparison and theoretical specu- 
lation. These materials formed the enlarged basis of astro- 
nomical science between Newton and Sir William Herschell. 
His gigantic reflectors introduced the astronomer to regions 
of space before un visited, extended beyond all previous con- 
ception the range of the observed phenomena, and with it 
proportionably enlarged the range of constructive theory. 
The discovery of a new primary planet and its attend- 
ant satellites was but the first step of his progress into the 
labyrinth of the heavens. Contemporaneously with his ob- 

■* Dr. Bowditch in his admirable article in the North American Review, Vol. 
XX. p. 310. The .value of Bradley's observations may be estimated from the labor 
bestowed upon their reduction by Bessel as late as 1818, in his "fundamenta astro- 
nomic pro anno MDCCLV, deducta ex observationibus viri incomparabilis James 
Bradley." 



38 

servations, the French astronomers and especially La Place, 
with a geometrical skill scarcely if at all inferior to that of its 
great author, resumed the whole system of Newton, and 
brought every phenomenon observed since his time within its 
laws. Difficulties of fact with which he struggled in vain, 
gave way to more accurate observations, and problems that 
defied the power of his analysis yielded to the modern im- 
provements of the calculus. 

But there is no ultima Thule in the progress of science. 
With the recent augmentations of telescopic power, the de- 
tails of the nebular theory proposed by Sir W. HerscheJl 
with such courage and ingenuity have been drawn in ques- 
tion. Many — most — of those milky patches in which he 
beheld what he regarded as cosmical matter, as yet in an 
unformed state, — the rudimental material of worlds not yet 
condensed, — have been resolved into stars, as bright and 
distinct as any in the firmament. I well recall the glow of 
satisfaction, with which on the 22d of September, 1847, being 
then connected with the University at Cambridge, I received 
a letter from the venerable director of the observatory there, 
beginning with these memorable words : " You will rejoice 
with me that the great nebula in Orion has yielded to the 
powers of our incomparable telescope ! . . . It should be 
borne in mind, that this nebula, and that of Andromeda 
[which has been also resolved at Cambridge] are the last 
strongholds of the nebular theory.* " 

But if some of the adventurous speculations built by Sir 
William Herschell on the bewildering revelations of his tele- 
scope have been since questioned, the vast progress which has 
been made in sidereal astronomy, (to which, as I understand, 
the Dudley Observatory will be particularly devoted,) the dis- 
covery of the parallax of the fixed stars, the investigation of 
the interior relations of binary and triple systems of stars, the 

* Annals of the Observatory of Harvard College, p. cxxi. 



39 

theories for the explanation of the extraordinary, not to say- 
fantastic, shapes discerned in some of the nebulous systems, 
— whirls and spirals radiating through spaces as vast as the 
orbit of Neptune,* — the glimpses at systems beyond that to 
which our sun belongs, — these are all splendid results, which 
may fairly be attributed to the school of Herschell, and will 
for ever insure no secondary place to that name in the annals 
of science.f 

In the remarks which I have hitherto made, T have had 
mainly in view the direct connection of .astronomical science 
with the uses of life and the service of man. But a generous 
philosophy contemplates the subject in higher relations. It 
is a remark as old at least as Plato, and is repeated from him 
more than once by Cicero, that all the liberal arts have a com- 
mon bond and relationship^ The different sciences contem- 
plate as their immediate object the different departments of 
animate and inanimate nature ; but this great system itself is 
but one. Its various parts are so interwoven with each other, 
that the most extraordinary relations and unexpected analogies 
are constantly presenting themselves ; and arts and sciences 
seemingly the least connected, render to each other the most 
effective assistance. 

The history of electricity, galvanism, and magnetism, fur- 
nishes the most striking illustration of this remark. Com- 
mencing with the meteorological phenomena of our own 
atmosphere, and terminating with the observation of the 
remotest heavens, it may well be adduced on an occasion like 
the present. Franklin demonstrated the identity of lightning 
and the electric fluid. This discovery gave a great impulse 

* See the remarkable memoir of Professor Alexander, "on the origin of the 
forms and the present condition of some of the clusters of stars, and several of the 
Nebula?." — Gould's Astronomical Journal, Vol. III. p. 95. 

t For an analysis of the progressive Views of Sir W. Herschell on the Sidereal 
system, see Etudes d' Astronomie Stdlaire, par F. G. W. Struve, pp. 23-44. 

X Archias, § 1 ; de Oratore, Lib. III. § 21. 



40 

to electrical research, with little else in view but the means of 
protection from the thundercloud. A purely accidental cir- 
cumstance led the physician Galvani at Bologna to trace the 
mysterious element, under conditions entirely novel both of 
development and application. In this new form, it became, 
in the hands of Davy, the instrument of the most extraordi- 
nary chemical operations ; and earths and alkalis, touched by 
the creative wire, started up into metals that float on water, 
and kindle in the air. At a later period, the closest affinities 
are observed between electricity and magnetism, on the one 
hand; while on the other, the relations of polarity are de- 
tected between acids and alkalis. — Plating and gilding hence- 
forth become electrical processes. In the last applications of 
the same subtle medium, it has become the messenger of 
intelligence across the land and beneath the sea ; and is now 
employed by the astronomer to ascertain the difference of 
longitudes, to transfer the beats of the clock from one station 
to another, and to record the moment of his observations with 
automatic accuracy. How large a share has been borne by 
America in these magnificent discoveries and applications, 
among the most brilliant achievements of modern science, 
will sufficiently appear from the repetition of the names of 
Franklin, Henry, Morse, Walker, Mitchell, Lock, and Bond. 

It has sometimes happened, whether from the harmonious 
relations to each other of the different departments of science, 
or from rare felicity of individual genius, that the most ex- 
traordinary intellectual versatility has been manifested by the 
same person. Although Newton's transcendent talent did not 
blaze out in childhood, yet as a boy he discovered great apti- 
tude for mechanical contrivance. His water-clock, self-moving 
vehicle, and mill, were the wonder of the village ; the latter 
propelled by a living mouse. Sir David Brewster represents 
the accounts as differing, whether the mouse was made to 
advance " by a string attached to its tail," or by " its unavail- 
ing attempts to reach a portion of corn placed above the 



41 

wheel." It seems more reasonable to conclude that the youth- 
ful discoverer of the law of gravitation intended, by the com- 
bination of these opposite attractions, to produce a balanced 
movement. It is consoling to the average mediocrity of the 
race to perceive in these sportive essays, that the mind of 
Newton passed through the stage of boyhood. But emerging 
from boyhood, what a bound it made as from earth to heaven! 
Soon after commencing Bachelor of arts, at the age of twenty- 
four, he untwisted the golden and silver threads of the solar 
spectrum ; simultaneously, or soon after, conceived the method 
of fluxions ; and arrived at the elemental idea of universal 
gravity, before he had passed to his Master's degree.* Master 
of arts, indeed ! That degree, if no other, was well bestowed. 
Universities are unjustly accused of fixing science in stereo- 
type. That diploma is enough of itself to redeem the honors 
of academical parchment from centuries of learned dulness 
and scholastic dogmatism. 

But the great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and 
purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, 
and to furnish a refined pleasure. Considering this as the 
ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim pre- 
cedence of astronomy. No other science furnishes such a 
palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the 
foundation of our intellectual system ; the great ideas of time, 
and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and 
motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages 
on ages required for several of the secular equations of the 
solar system ; of distances from which the light of a fixed 
star would not reach us in twenty millions of years ; f of 
magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a football ; 
of starry hosts, suns like our own, numberless as the sands 
on the shore ; of worlds and systems shooting through the 



* Sir David Brewster's Life of Newton, chapter III. 
t NichoPs Architecture of the Heavens, p. 160. 
6 



42 

infinite spaces, with a velocity compared with which the can- 
non-ball is a way-worn, heavy-paced traveller ! 

Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for 
elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they pre- 
sent even to the unaided sight scenes of glory which words 
are too feeble to describe. I had occasion, a few weeks since, 
to take the early train from Providence to Boston ; and for 
this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Every thing 
around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken 
only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and 
rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night, 
— the sky was without a cloud, — the winds were whist. 
The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the 
stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her 
presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day ; 
the Pleiades just above the horizon shed their sweet influ- 
ence in the east ; Lyra sparkled near the zenith ; Andromeda 
veiled her newly-discovered glories from the naked eye in 
the south ; the steady pointers far beneath the pole looked 
meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign. 

Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As 
we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more 
perceptible ; the intense blue of the sky began to soften ; the 
smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest ; the sister- 
beams of the Pleiades soon melted together ; but the bright 
constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. 
Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of 
angels hidden from mortal eyes shifted the scenery of the 
heavens ; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the 
dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray ; the great 
watch-stars shut up their holy eyes ; the east began to kindle. 
Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky ; the 
whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of 
the morning light, which came pouring down from above in 
one great ocean of radiance ; till at length, as we reached the 



43 

Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the 
horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf 
into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting 
gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of 
day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began 
his state. 

I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, 
who in the morning of the world went up to the hill-tops of 
Central Asia, and ignorant of the true God, adored the most 
glorious work of his hand. But I am filled with amazement, 
when I am told that in this enlightened age, and in the heart 
of the Christian world, there are persons who can witness 
this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the 
Creator, and yet say in their hearts, " there is no God." 

Numerous as are the heavenly bodies visible to the naked 
eye, and glorious as are their manifestations, it is probable 
that in our own system there are great numbers as yet undis- 
covered. Just two hundred years ago this year, Huyghens 
announced the discovery of one satellite of Saturn, and ex- 
pressed the opinion that the six planets and six satellites then 
known, and making up the perfect number of twelve, com- 
posed the whole of our planetary system.* In 1729, an astro- 
nomical writer came to the conclusion that there might be 
other bodies in our system, but that the limit of telescopic 
power had been reached, and no further discoveries were 
likely to be made.f The orbit of one comet only had been 
definitively calculated. Since that time the power of the 
telescope has been indefinitely increased ; — two primary plan- 
ets of the first class, ten satellites,^ and forty-three small 
planets revolving between Mars and Jupiter have been dis- 

* Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, New Series, Vol. 
III. p. 282. 

t Admiral Smyth's Celestial Cycle, Yol. I. p. 198. 

X This computation of the number of satellites discovered since 1729 assumes six 
as the number of those of Uranus. See J. R. Hind's Solar System, p. 175. 



44 

covered, the orbits of six or seven hundred comets, some of 
brief period, have been ascertained; — and it has been com- 
puted that hundreds of thousands of these mysterious bodies 
wander through our system. There is no reason to think that 
all the primary planets, which revolve about the sun, have 
been discovered. An indefinite increase in the number of 
asteroids may be anticipated ; while outside of Neptune, 
between our sun and the nearest fixed star, supposing the 
attraction of the sun to prevail through half the distance, 
there is room for ten more primary planets, succeeding each 
other at distances increasing in a geometrical ratio. The first 
of these will unquestionably be discovered as soon as the per- 
turbations of Neptune shall have been accurately observed ; 
— and with maps of the heavens, on which the smallest tele- 
scopic stars are laid down, any one of them may be dis- 
covered much sooner.* 

But it is when we turn our observation and our thoughts 
from our own system, to the systems which lie beyond it in 
the heavenly spaces, that we approach a more adequate con- 
ception of the vastness of Creation. All analogy teaches us 
that the sun which gives light to us is but one of those count- 
less stellar fires which deck the firmament, and that every 
glittering star in that shining host is the centre of a system, 
as vast and as full of subordinate luminaries as our own. Of 
these suns, — centres of planetary systems, — thousands are 
visible to the naked eye, millions are discovered by the tele- 
scope. Sir John Herschell, in the account of his operations 
at the Cape of Good Hope,f calculates that about five and 
a half millions of stars are visible enough to be distinctly 
counted in a twenty foot reflector in both hemispheres. He 
adds that " the actual number is much greater, there can be 

* Leverrier, Compte Rendu, 5th Oct. 1846, p. 659. Proceedings of American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. I. p. 178. 

t Results of Astronomical Observations made during the years 1834-8, at the 
Cape of Good Hope, p. 381. 



45 

little doubt." His illustrious father estimated on one occa- 
sion that 125,000 stars passed through the field of his forty 
foot reflector in a quarter of an hour. This would give 
12,000,000 for the entire circuit of the heavens, in a single 
telescopic zone ; and this estimate was made under the as- 
sumption that the nebulae were masses of luminous matter 
not yet condensed into suns. 

These stupendous calculations, however, form but the first 
column of the inventory of the universe. Faint white specks 
are visible even to the naked eye of a practised observer 
in different parts of the heavens. Under high magnifying 
powers, several thousands of such spots are visible, — no 
longer, however, faint white specks, but many of them re- 
solved by powerful telescopes into vast aggregations of stars, 
each of which may with propriety be compared with the 
milky way of our system. Many of these nebulae, however, 
resisted the power of Sir Wm. Herschell's great reflector, and 
were accordingly still regarded by him as masses of unformed 
luminous matter. This, till a few years since, was perhaps 
the prevailing opinion, — and the nebular theory filled a large 
space in modern astronomical science. But with the increase 
of instrumental power, especially under the mighty grasp of 
Lord Rosse's gigantic reflector and the great refractors at Pul- 
kova and Cambridge, the most irresolvable of these nebulae 
have given way ; and the better opinion now is, that every 
one of them is a galaxy, like our own milky way, composed 
of millions of suns. In other words, we are brought to. the 
bewildering conclusion, that thousands of these misty specks, 
the greater part of them too faint to be seen by the naked 
eye, are, not each a universe like our solar system, but each 
a "swarm" of universes of unappreciable magnitude.* The 
mind sinks overpowered by the contemplation. We repeat 

* Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol. III. p. 44, Otte's Translation. 



46 

the words, but they no longer convey distinct ideas to the 
understanding. 

But these conclusions, however vast their comprehension, 
carry us but another step forward in the realms of sidereal 
astronomy. A proper motion in space of our sun and of the 
fixed stars, as we call them, has long been believed to exist. 
Their vast distances only prevent its being more apparent. 
The great improvement, which has taken place in instru- 
ments of measurement within the last generation, has not 
only established the existence of this motion, but has pointed 
to the region in the starry vault, around which our whole 
solar and stellar system, with its myriad of attendant planet- 
ary worlds, appears to be performing a mighty revolution. 
If, then, we assume that outside of the system to which we 
belong, and in which our sun is but a star like Aldebaran or 
Sirius, the different nebulae of which we have spoken, thou- 
sands of which spot the heavens, constitute each a distinct 
family of universes, we must, following the guide of analogy, 
attribute to each of them also, beyond all the revolutions of 
their individual attendant planetary systems, a great revolu- 
tion, comprehending the whole ; while the same course of 
analogical reasoning would lead us still further onward, and 
in the last analysis, require us to assume a transcendental 
connection between all these mighty systems, — a universe of 
universes, circling round in the infinity of space, and preserv- 
ing its equilibrium by the same laws of mutual attraction, 
which bind the lower worlds together.* 

It may be thought that conceptions like these are calcu- 
lated rather to depress than to elevate us in the scale of 
being ; that banished as he is by these contemplations to a 
corner of creation, and there reduced to an atom, man sinks 

* For popular views of the present state of science in the department of sidereal 
astronomy, see Sir John Herschell's Outlines, Part III. ; Himmelskunde volksfass- 
lich bearbeitet von M. A. Stern, pp. 258-319; and Etudes d' astronomie Stellaire, 
par F. G. W. Struve. 



47 

to nothingness in this infinity of worlds. But a second 
thought corrects the impression. These vast contemplations 
are well calculated to inspire awe, but not abasement. Mind 
and matter are incommensurable. An immortal soul, even 
while clothed in " this muddy vesture of decay," is in the eye 
of God and reason, a purer essence than the brightest sun 
that lights the depths of heaven. The organized human eye, 
instinct with life and spirit, which, gazing through the tele- 
scope, travels up to the cloudy speck in the handle of Orion's 
sword, and bids it blaze forth into a galaxy as vast as ours, 
stands higher in the order of being than all that host of lumi- 
naries. The intellect of Newton, which discovered the law 
that holds the revolving worlds together, is a nobler work of 
God than a universe of universes of unthinking matter. 

If still treading the loftiest paths of analogy, we adopt the 
supposition, — to me I own the grateful supposition, — that 
the countless planetary worlds which attend these countless 
suns, are the abodes of rational beings like man, instead of 
bringing back from this exalted conception a feeling of insig- 
nificance, as if the individuals of our race were but poor 
atoms in the infinity of being, I regard it, on the contrary, 
as a glory of our human nature, that it belongs to a family 
which no man can number of rational natures like itself. In 
the order of being they may stand beneath us, or they may 
stand above us ; he may well be content with his place who 
is made " a little lower than the angels." * 

Finally, my friends, I believe there is no contemplation 
better adapted to awaken devout ideas than that of the 
heavenly bodies ; no branch of natural science which bears 
clearer testimony to the power and wisdom of God, than that 
to which you this day consecrate a temple. The heart of the 

*■ For some interesting views of the controversy which had its origin in the inge- 
nious Essay " of the Plurality of Worlds," see Professor Baden Powell's "Essays 
on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, the Unity of Worlds, and the Philosophy 
of Creation." 



48 

ancient world, with all the prevailing ignorance of the true 
nature and motions of the heavenly orbs, was religiously 
impressed by their survey. There is a passage in one of 
those admirable philosophical treatises of Cicero, composed in 
the decline of life, as a solace under domestic bereavement 
and patriotic concern at the impending convulsions of the 
State, in which, quoting from some lost work of Aristotle, he 
treats the topic in a manner which almost puts to shame the 
teachings of Christian wisdom : — 

" Praeclare ergo Aristo teles, ' si essent,' inquit, qui sub 
terra semper habitavissent, bonis et illustribus domiciliis quae 
essent ornata signis atque pictaris, instructaque rebus iis 
omnibus, quibus abundant ii qui beati putantur, nee tamen 
exissent unquam supra terram ; accepissent autem fama et 
auditione, esse quoddam numen et vim Deorum ; deinde ali- 
quo tempore, patefactis terras faucibus, ex illis abditis sedibus 
evadere in haec loca quae nos incolimus, atque exire potuis- 
sent ; cum repente, terram, et maria, coelumque vidissent ; 
nubium magnitudinem, ventorumque vim cognovissent, as- 
pexissentque solem, ejusque turn magnitudinem pulchritudi- 
nemque, turn etiam efficientiam cognovissent, quod is diem 
efficeret, toto ccelo luce diffusa ; cum autem terras nox opa- 
casset, turn caelum totum cernerent astris distinctum et 
ornatum, lunaeque luminum varietatem turn crescentis turn 
senescentis, eorumque omnium ortus et occasus, atque in 
aeternitate ratos immutabilesque cursus ; haec cum viderent, 
profecto et esse Deos, et haec tanta opera Deorum esse arbi- 
trarentur." * 

" Nobly does Aristotle observe, that if there were beings 
who had always lived under ground, in convenient, nay, mag- 
nificent dwellings, adorned with statues and pictures, and 
every thing which belongs to prosperous life, but who had 
never come above ground, — who had heard, however, by 

* Cicero de Natura Deorum, Lib. II. § 30. 



• 49 

fame and report, of the being and power of the gods, — if at 
a certain time, the portals of the earth being thrown open, 
they had been able to emerge from those hidden abodes to 
the regions inhabited by us ; when suddenly they had seen 
the earth, the seas, and the sky ; had perceived the vastness 
of the clouds and the force of the winds ; had contemplated 
the sun, his magnitude and his beauty, and still more his 
effectual power, that it is he who makes the day by the diffu- 
sion of his light through the whole sky ; and when night had 
darkened the earth, should then behold the whole heavens 
studded and adorned with stars, and the various lights of the 
waxing and waning moon, the risings and the settings of all 
these heavenly bodies, and their courses fixed and immutable 
in all eternity ; when, I say, they should see these things, 
truly they would believe that there are gods, and that these, 
so great things, are their works." 

There is much by day to engage the attention of the 
observatory ; the sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, 
the spots on his disc, (to us the faint indications of move- 
ments of unimagined grandeur in his luminous atmosphere,) 
a solar eclipse, a transit of the inferior planets, the mysteries 
of the spectrum ; all phenomena of vast importance and 
interest. But night is the astronomer's accepted time ; he 
goes to his delightful labors when the busy world goes to its 
rest. A dark pall spreads over the resorts of active life ; ter- 
restrial objects, hill and valley, and rock and stream, and the 
abodes of men disappear ; but the curtain is drawn up which 
concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine and there 
they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton 
and Galileo, of Keppler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hip- 
parchus ; yea, as they moved and shone when the morning 
stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. 
All has changed on earth ; but the glorious heavens remain 
unchanged. The plough passes over the site of mighty cities, 
the homes of powerful nations are desolate, the languages 

7 



S 



50 

they spoke are forgotten ; but the stars that shone for them 
are shining for us ; the same eclipses run their steady cycle ; 
the same equinoxes call out the flowers of spring and send 
the husbandman to the harvest; the sun pauses at either 
tropic as he did when his course began ; and sun and moon, 
and planet and satellite, and star and constellation and 
galaxy, still bear witness to the power, the wisdom, and the 
love which placed them in the heavens, and upholds them 
there. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



003 537 077 8 * 



